Claudio Noce's Padrenostro (Our
Father), the first of four Italian films vying for this year's
Golden Lion, screens at the Venice Film Festival on Friday.
Padrenostro stars Pierfrancesco Favino as the director's father,
the victim of a terrorist attack in 1976.
Here is the festival's synopsis of the plot:
Rome, 1976. Valerio is ten years old and has a lively
imagination. His life as a child is turned upside down when,
with his mother Gina, he witnesses an attack on his father
Alfonso by a terrorist group. From that moment on, fear and a
sense of vulnerability leave a dramatic mark on the feelings of
the whole family. But it is precisely in those difficult days
that Valerio gets to know Christian, a boy not much older than
him. Solitary, rebellious and shameless, he seems to have
appeared out of nowhere. That meeting, in a summer filled with
discoveries, will change their lives forever.
Here is Noce's accompanying statement, from the festival
website:
His strong, magnetic and heroic figure stands as an archetype of
a whole generation of men for whom emotions were perceived
solely as weakness and had to be covered up by silence. In the
December of 1976, when the attack was made on my father, I was
just a year and half old, enough to sense the fear but not to
understand that that pain and worry were going to stay inside me
for a long time. I was never able to tell him this. Writing this
letter to my father, tracing the outlines of a generation of
"invisible" children shrouded in the cigarette smoke of
grownups, has not been easy. Trying to do it by turning private
words into universal ones has been a great challenge as a
filmmaker and as a man.
"Next after God comes my Father" (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart).
Fourteen foreign films are vying with four from Italy for the
Golden Lion at this year's 77th annual Venice Film Festival
which kicked off on Wednesday night and runs until September 12.
Defending Italy's colours are PADRENOSTRO, MISS MARX by Susanna
Nicchiarelli, NOTTURNO by Gianfranco Rosi and LE SORELLE
MACALUSO by Emma Dante.
Here are the overseas contenders:
WIFE OF SPY by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
AND TOMORROW THE ENTIRE WORLD byJulius Von Heinz
NUEVO ORDEN by Michel Franco
QUO VADIS, AIDA? by Jasmila Zbanic
SUN CHILDREN by Majid Majidi
LAILA IN HAIFA by Amos Gitai
DEAR COMRADES! by Andrei Konchalovsky
NOMADLAND by Chloé Zhao
PIECES OF A WOMAN byKornél Mundruczó
NEVER GONNA SNOW by Malgorzata Szumowska
THE WORLD TO COME by Mona Fastvold
LOVERS by Nicole Garcia
THE DISCIPLE by Chaitanya Tamhane
IN BETWEEN DYING by Hilal Baydarov.
This year's jury is chaired by Cate Blanchett.
Italian actress Anna Foglietta is the host. It will be a
COVID-safe event, organisers say.
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